If you’re searching for some simple ways to increase your ranking with the search engines and provide visitors with a better user experience, external CSS style sheets and external JavaScript files might just be the answer you’re looking for. As search engine companies such as Yahoo, MSN and Google continue to consider page loading speed an important factor in determining the ranking of a website, the need to reduce load times becomes more and more important. This can be accomplished through file compression strategies such as GZIP and deflation and by optimizing graphics file sizes. In addition to this, external CSS style sheets an external JavaScript files can further decrease the size of a web page and thus decrease page load time, making for a better user experience.

In this article, we'll be exploring exactly how external CSS style sheets an external JavaScript files help to accomplish this and thus help you achieve better search engine rankings.

How External CSS Style Sheets and External Javascript Files Work

When a web page is designed, the programmer has the option of writing the design features directly into the HTML code of the webpage itself. This means that every web page will include both the code required to construct the structure of the web page as well as the codes which determine the design features: font types, font colors and other graphic design features such as borders and coloring of tables and div tags. This extra code obviously increases the size of the HTML page and makes the entire website “heavier” while increasing the load time of all the pages on the site. Using external CSS style sheets, you can create one style sheet which contains the graphic design information for the entire website including.

This one style sheet is then attached to each of the web pages which contain the corresponding design features, thus eliminating the need to contain cumbersome design coding on each individual web page. This not only reduces the size of your web pages, but it also makes it simple to change design features on the entire website by making a few small changes in one external CSS style sheet. The same principle applies when exporting JavaScript features from a web page to an external JavaScript file. Instead of having the JavaScript code written directly into the HTML code of the webpage, the JavaScript is exported to an external file.

This way, one JavaScript can be used on multiple webpages without having to include the code on each of those webpages. This reduces the file size of the HTML pages which originally contained the JavaScript code and thus optimizes load times for those HTML pages.

The first major benefit of using external CSS style sheets and external JavaScript files is faster load times for your web pages. According to an experiment at Google, even a half a second difference page load time can make a 20% difference in how much traffic that pages retains. In other words, approximately 20% of your visitors would rather click away from your web pages and go somewhere else than to wait an additional half second for your page to load. Since switching from tabular design layouts to using external CSS style sheets can accomplish the reduction in file size of 50% or more, this minor change could literally increase the profitability of your website with a few hours.

Websites which use external CSS style sheets also rank higher in the search engines due to: greater content to code ratio (the amount of written content in comparison to the amount of programming code contained in a web page), cleaner codes which are more accessible to search engine spiders and because of the ability to place the content at the top of an HTML document instead of having it preceded by a lot of code. Using external CSS style sheets and external JavaScript files can also result in reduced bandwidth use, which for high traffic websites could mean a lot of money saved. Finally, websites using external CSS style sheets are also more compatible with mobile devices and with WebTV.

Considering these benefits, it's easy to see why external CSS stylesheet external JavaScript files could increase the profitability of your online business without making any increase in your traffic.

Taking the Next Step in UsingExternal CSS Style Sheets and External Javascript Files

By inputting the URL of your website into our home page, you can receive a complete SEO analysis and discover whether or not your website is making use of file compression, external CSS style sheets and external JavaScript files in order to optimize the load times of your web pages. If you find that your site is not using these types of files, the next logical step would be to hire a Web programmer to take care of this task for you. For more information on how to hire a good Web programmer, see our articles on Five Common Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring Freelancers and How to Choose an SEO Firm. The money invested in doing so will likely be made up for very quickly.

Conclusion

As you can see, the use of external CSS style sheets and external JavaScript files can prove very profitable for your online business. So before you leave this site, go ahead and run your free at SEO analysis and find out what your options are for increasing your search engine optimization and creating a better user experience for your site visitors. Thanks for visiting our site today!